Brough's writings on the technology, economic and social issues of communications at the intersection of the Internet, telecom and mobility.

March 20, 2010

The Wi-Fi solution for mobile data offload

A recent Google alert pointed me to this article which I wrote in December 2009 for my monthly column in Internet Telephony magazine. It was published in the February issue and has only now become available on line. None-the-less, it's points are timely. It opens with:

LTE versus WiMAX is a standard topic in the press and at conferences, as if something disruptive was happening or might happen. Wrong! WiMAX and LTE are technical variations on the same business model providing similar services. If we’re looking for disruption, we need to catch up on what’s happening with Wi-Fi.

and concludes:

Expect to see both fixed and mobile carriers including free Wi-Fi access in their subscription bundles as Wi-Fi trumps femtocells. Conventional operators are not going away but, over the next decade, it’s Wi-Fi that will shake up business models and drive disruption.